reflexive & demonstrative question

Latin Learning Latin
1

I am not looking for the Latin translation but guidance to see if I am headed in the right direction.

Is ‘his’ in this case reflexive?
The Gaul praises his arms (his own).

Is ‘his’ in this case demonstrative?
The Gaul praises his arms (not his own).

Thanks,
dlb
.

2

I believe you are correct. The reflexive pronoun (se, sui, sibi) is so called, as you probably know because it ‘reflects back’ to the subject of the verb. ‘I hurt myself’ is a sentence where ‘myself’ is reflexive - it refers back to the subject ‘I’. Whereas ‘He hurt me’ is not reflexive, ‘me’ is not the subject, ‘he’ is. hth.
Phil

3

Thanks for the response.
dlb
.

4

Isn’t there some distinction to be made in the first example between reflexive and possessive?

5

I think the best discussion of ‘reflexives’ in Latin and how they overlap with English reflexives, and also how their use is distinctive and not really comparable to English is still the one in Bradley Arnold’s “Latin Prose Composition”. All best, I.

6

I don’t think “reflexive” and “possessive” are concepts that need to be distinguished from each other, as such: you have both reflexive ways of expressing possession (suus, -a, -um) and non-reflexive ones (eius, eorum).

It occurs to me, though, that you’re probably trying to get at the distinction between the reflexive possessive adjective (suus, -a, -um) and the genitive of the possessive pronoun (sui), which is a wise thing to do - sui is used in non-possessive genitive contexts, like objective or partitive genitives (e.g. ‘love of himself’ would be ‘amor sui’).